Ecotricity jumps the shark?

[Paul_F]

Do any anaerobic digesters use seaweed? It strikes me that seaweed could be used to provide a significant amount of biomass (but farming it would require treating with more respect to avoid the problems we have elsewhere) without significantly affecting current farmland. Since Seaweed contains several useful plant nutrients, including nitrogen, potassium, phosphate and magnesium the fertiliser from the digester could be more beneficial to the soil than simply putting back what was harvested in he first place.

Couple of headaches but it looks feasible - the main problem is cost-effective harvesting of it since the products are fairly low-value and often the resulting fertilizer is a long way from where you would actually want to use it.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/274373/reporting

[AE-NMidlands]

Couple of headaches but it looks feasible - the main problem is cost-effective harvesting of it since the products are fairly low-value and often the resulting fertilizer is a long way from where you would actually want to use it.
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/274373/reporting

That's an interesting paper, but not a very glamorous subject:

The human sewage inoculum, an inoculum of anaerobic marine mud mixed with rotting seaweed and inoculum 8 all developed to give higher volumes of methane (41-62.5 mL/g seaweed VS by week 4), compared to other inocula (3.5 and 27.5 mL/g VS). Inoculum 8 also gave the highest acetate production (6.5 mmol/g VS) in a single-stage fermenter AD system and produced most methane (8.4 mL/mmol acetate) in phase II of a two-stage AD system.

Lovely job!
(Which reminds me of a joke I heard on the radio: The construction of a big new sewage works near Hull brought a lot of jobs into the area!)

[Mr Gus]

I like the thread title terminology..
But for the sake of archival understanding, as etymology changes..

"https://www.urbandictionary.com/define. ... -the-shark"

A good read, never knew its origins may have stemmed from "happy days"
The wikipedia entry has more satisfying blurb, but is open to being changed by all & sundry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

[Mart]

One of the real problems I have with this is it's partnering with a generally pro-fossil fuel newspaper to "save our gas boilers" - explicitly promoting the use of methane for space heating and in reality fossil methane since the likelihood of this being able to be scaled up as claimed is virtually zero.

Yep, that's a good point, akin to my concerns about the FF industry talking up the benefits of H2, when we don't have the green hydrogen to meet the ideas/suggestions.

So even the promotion of bio-methane, could have negative ramifications greater than any potential benefits ..... yeah, very interesting point. Cheers.


Moving to the big issue then, space heating, how can we shift away from FF gas in anything like a reasonable period? I looked into getting an ASHP for our house, a wet system, but the cost was nearly £12k, and whilst the subsidies would meet most of that, it just didn't seem like a moral use of Gov monies, given our gas consumption (for GCH, cooking and DHW) was about 8,000kWh pa. We've since gotten it down to around 5,000kWh by installing two air to air A/C units, and I've invested the rest of the money into RE schemes, such as windfarms, PV etc, but that gas consumption still bugs me.

Perhaps I can live vicariously, as I've persuaded my sister to install an ASHP unit on their large house/farm/business property. It has one oil boiler at present (previously two before a full overhaul and insulation program), and she's just had the PV system installed. I persuaded her to go to 3phase, so she has 10.3kWp, which will hopefully cover most of the ASHP use (including hot water) for 8 months of the year, or at least some of the Mch and Oct months.

TBF she's so excited about getting rid of the diesel burner, but such a headache getting all the clearances, approvals, and work done for the ASHP.

[Paul_F]

Moving to the big issue then, space heating, how can we shift away from FF gas in anything like a reasonable period? I looked into getting an ASHP for our house, a wet system, but the cost was nearly £12k, and whilst the subsidies would meet most of that, it just didn't seem like a moral use of Gov monies, given our gas consumption (for GCH, cooking and DHW) was about 8,000kWh pa. We've since gotten it down to around 5,000kWh by installing two air to air A/C units, and I've invested the rest of the money into RE schemes, such as windfarms, PV etc, but that gas consumption still bugs me.

There's a ton we could/should be doing but aren't:

1. Ban gas connections for new houses ASAP. The Passivhaus we're looking at building would only have a peak heat demand of 7kW if we built it to building regulations - no problem at all for a single-phase ASHP.
2. Ban the sale of gas hobs ASAP. Induction is better in every conceivable way, but people are emotionally invested in their gas hobs. They don't consume a huge amount of gas, but they're a gateway drug to people staying on gas anyway.
3. Divert funding through something like Innovate UK to the retrofit of a ~10 year old housing estate in partnership with the company that built it. Houses should in theory be built to a decent-ish standard, boilers are at end of life and being recent there should be few or no nasty surprises as all the houses will be essentially the same as the plans and only built to a very small number of different designs. Essentially a heat-pump version of Energiesprong.
4. Shift the green taxes on electricity from being apportioned on a kWh basis to electricity to being apportioned on a kg CO₂e basis on home heating fuel. Gas will get more expensive, oil and coal a lot more expensive, and electricity a lot cheaper. Ideally increasing the rates a bit and using the excess for something like the Winter Fuel Allowance for non-pensioners in receipt of benefits to balance-out the increased costs for them, plus some sort of insulation/heat pump refit grant maybe.

No need to panic about not doing everything, but there are quite a few things we could be doing right now and aren't.

[Mart]

Thanks Paul.

I love No.4, that's an idea that's been floating around in my head for a few years, as it would help the shift over to greener tariffs too, and since the Tax Office would be involved, it would also eliminate or reduce the dodgy wording used by some companies to mislead on how green the energy they are purchasing, is.

It's also nice to be able to throw out suggestions that involve higher energy prices, in some ways, without all the BS that I get on other sites, where the AGW deniers, and RE 'haters' would immediately start replying about how I don't care about poor people dying in cold houses.

A well planned policy of tax and spend, or carrot and stick, should help the poor and vulnerable, and make life better for them, as well as reducing CO2(e) emissions ..... which is nice!


Just remembered that I've also got some investments in social housing improvement schemes (through Abundance), but these do carry a lot of risk, since they can go bust quite easily, but at least that's a way that we can try to get involved, but really it should be the Gov funding these measures ...... blimey that last bit sounds like a bad joke, and it wasn't intentional.

[Stinsy]

Moving to the big issue then, space heating, how can we shift away from FF gas in anything like a reasonable period? I looked into getting an ASHP for our house, a wet system, but the cost was nearly £12k, and whilst the subsidies would meet most of that, it just didn't seem like a moral use of Gov monies, given our gas consumption (for GCH, cooking and DHW) was about 8,000kWh pa. We've since gotten it down to around 5,000kWh by installing two air to air A/C units, and I've invested the rest of the money into RE schemes, such as windfarms, PV etc, but that gas consumption still bugs me.

There's a ton we could/should be doing but aren't:

1. Ban gas connections for new houses ASAP. The Passivhaus we're looking at building would only have a peak heat demand of 7kW if we built it to building regulations - no problem at all for a single-phase ASHP.
2. Ban the sale of gas hobs ASAP. Induction is better in every conceivable way, but people are emotionally invested in their gas hobs. They don't consume a huge amount of gas, but they're a gateway drug to people staying on gas anyway.
3. Divert funding through something like Innovate UK to the retrofit of a ~10 year old housing estate in partnership with the company that built it. Houses should in theory be built to a decent-ish standard, boilers are at end of life and being recent there should be few or no nasty surprises as all the houses will be essentially the same as the plans and only built to a very small number of different designs. Essentially a heat-pump version of Energiesprong.
4. Shift the green taxes on electricity from being apportioned on a kWh basis to electricity to being apportioned on a kg CO₂e basis on home heating fuel. Gas will get more expensive, oil and coal a lot more expensive, and electricity a lot cheaper. Ideally increasing the rates a bit and using the excess for something like the Winter Fuel Allowance for non-pensioners in receipt of benefits to balance-out the increased costs for them, plus some sort of insulation/heat pump refit grant maybe.

No need to panic about not doing everything, but there are quite a few things we could be doing right now and aren't.

Agree with all that. Particularly on board with banning gas hobs, and new homes having a heat-pump rather than boiler.

In addition, for me:
- All new houses to have 1kWp pf solar per bedroom.
- All new houses to have 2.4kWh of battery storage per bedroom.

[Paul_F]

I love No.4, that's an idea that's been floating around in my head for a few years, as it would help the shift over to greener tariffs too, and since the Tax Office would be involved, it would also eliminate or reduce the dodgy wording used by some companies to mislead on how green the energy they are purchasing, is.

Not my idea - it's been floating around for a while - but I agree it's fundamentally a good one. The distribution of tax, etc. was set up when we had a vast amount of coal on the grid and gas was unarguably cleaner. That's no longer the case.

It's also nice to be able to throw out suggestions that involve higher energy prices, in some ways, without all the BS that I get on other sites, where the AGW deniers, and RE 'haters' would immediately start replying about how I don't care about poor people dying in cold houses.

It's worth noting that their argument (essentially that fuel should be very cheap) is also of significant benefit to rich people in big houses, i.e. typically the people making the argument. That's why I was thinking in terms of the winter fuel payment or an equivalent - it goes to people already in contact with the benefits system so isn't much if any extra overhead, is targeted at those who might fit the description of "poor people dying in cold houses", would be revenue neutral or even revenue-positive, and shifts the financial pressure so it is supporting rather than retarding a switch to cleaner fuels.

[Mr Gus]

Agree with all that. Particularly on board with banning gas hobs, and new homes having a heat-pump rather than boiler.

In addition, for me:
- All new houses to have 1kWp pf solar per bedroom.
- All new houses to have 2.4kWh of battery storage per bedroom.

All common sense foundation planning for years, ignored by both govt & naff estate builders for years also.

ALL planning permission for new dwellings should align to best placement for solar & energy conservation & harvesting.
Planning allowances for pre-existing dwellings should in part try to retrofit to reduce localised (& therefore national) energy demand.

New plan estates need to consider all those houses are sold linked to the above & water / energy recovery, as well as your new home also funds a new ripple type wind turbine elsewhere (auto sign up)

[Mart]

Don't forget also that the way that Dale is proposing to free up all this land for grass is by ending cattle farming and for the UK to go vegan.
Kind of seems unrealistic doesn't it?

Also, let's not forget if you're still burning stuff you're still creating NOx and PM5 particulates, so this does nothing to improve local air quality.

I wonder how long before Gridserve removes the Ecotricity bit from the Electric Highway altogether. They'll not want to be associated with that kind of baggage.

I also wonder how long Ecotricity will last in the current mass culling of the energy market suppliers?

Just to say, whilst I was trying to consider ways to get our space heating off FF's asap, this article points out one of the biggest problems with gas boilers, strongly supporting your post, so it would be remiss of me not to post it:

UK’s home gas boilers emit twice as much CO2 as all power stations – study

The millions of gas boilers in the UK’s homes produce twice as much climate-heating carbon emissions as all the nation’s gas-fired power stations combined, according to an analysis.

The finding highlighted the urgent need for a strong government policy to rapidly introduce low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, the researchers said.

The data also shows that home gas boilers collectively produce eight times as much nitrogen dioxide as the power plants. NO2 is an air pollutant linked to tens of thousands of early deaths a year in the UK.

[My bold.]